Christopher Ricks on his book ‘True Friendship’

True friendship

Christopher Ricks, whose interests range from Bob Dylan to Victorian Poetry, was once described by W.H. Auden as ‘the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding’. Previously Professor of Poetry at Oxford, now Professor of Humanities at Boston University, he talks about his new book, True Friendship, in which he explores relations between poets, and the effects these bonds have had on their work. Specifically, he considers Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell, and their relationship with the poetry of Eliot and Pound.